Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #35 for the week April 1st - April 8th, 2007. In this issue we cover Feisty Fawn's imminent release and the cancellation of Herd6. Launchpad has also been relaunched with a new interface as a public beta, and we review the long awaited change in licensing for the community documentation.

Problems with Archiving of Ubuntu Lists

Because of the high volume of traffic on the ubuntu-bugs and desktop-bugs mailing lists, the archiver is having problems backing up the rest of the mailing lists. For now, ubuntu-bugs and desktop-bugs will not be archived, so the rest of the mailings lists on lists.ubuntu.com can be backed up. Canonical would like to know if subscribers of the ubuntu-bugs and desktop-bugs lists are interested in their respective archives and for what reasons as all bugs are already available on Launchpad. You can read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-April/023542.html

NetworkManager Release Notes Discussed

There has been a discussion about problems encountered by Edgy users, with manually configured networks, upgrading to Feisty. While the Feisty network manager is installed by default and should ignore the manual configurations, the interfaces should be set to "automatic." This will be documented in the release notes. You can read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-April/023537.html.

Experimental Feisty+1 Toolchain Packages

The toolchain packages have been updated for Feisty+1 and should install on top of a current Feisty chroot/installation. The updates involve gcc, glibc, and gcj. There is a performance drop when switching to the new gcc libraries which is known and accepted by the gcc developers. Warning: The toolchain packages are very experimental and installation will likely cause most systems to become unstable. Read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-April/023529.html

Launchpad News

Canonical has started public beta testing of Launchpad 1.0. Launchpad is a web application that helps track communications between many free software communities. With the tool, its possible to coordinate and collaborate work among projects that have shared code. Launchpad features an interface that allows branding and emphasizes current activity of projects. Launchpad allows for team management, tracking bugs, hosting code, translations, feature and ideas tracking, and community support. Besides Ubuntu, well known projects like Zope, SilverCMS, and Jokosher use Launchpad. Read more: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/LaunchpadRelease (official press release), http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/103 (Mark Shuttleworth's blog)

Marius Nestor, at Softpedia News, writes about the beta version of Feisty. He includes many screenshots along with discussions of the migration assistant, restricted drivers manager, network manager tool, Beagle, the redesigned help center, codec installation, and plug and play network sharing with Avahi. A quick overview on the new features introduced in Feisty. Read the full article: http://news.softpedia.com/news/What-Should-You-Expect-from-Ubuntu-7-04-50206.shtml

William West, at mercator.net, discusses how Ubuntu derivatives can help parents protect their children from offensive content on the Internet while providing all the tools to do their homework. West covers web filters and Open Office, along with how to customize Ubuntu. While West talks about specific Ubuntu derivatives, all the filtering tools can be installed on any standard Ubuntu installation. Read the full article: http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518

Sarah, at 3till7.net, talks about the ease of using Ubuntu. She mentions the simplicity of installing by using the LiveCD and how Synaptic makes installing applications very easy. Sarah says that average people like her mom and dormmates have used Ubuntu successfully and can find help quickly on the Ubuntu Forums and wiki. Read more: http://www.3till7.net/2007/04/05/the-ease-of-linux-with-a-focus-on-ubuntu/

Clivecooper.co.uk talks about transitioning from Windows to Ubuntu. The site discusses why a user would want to move to Linux, why Ubuntu, how to install Ubuntu, and Linux equivalents of common Windows applications. Read more: http://www.clivecooper.co.uk/

LoCo News

Ubuntu Chicago LoCo at Flourish Conference

The Ubuntu Chicago Local Community recently represented at the Flourish Conference held at the University of Illinois - Chicago campus. With a strong showing at the conference, the team passed out over two hundred Ubuntu CDs. The team also participated in a "Battle of the Distros," an event where guests talked about the various distributions and what set them apart. Richard Johnson has an extensive write up on his weblog: http://blog.nixternal.com/2007.04.08/flourish-a-success/

Friday, April 13, 2007

Forum Council Meeting

Community Spotlight

Ubuntu Case Studies

A great way to promote anything is by showing people it actually works in the real world. Ubuntu has grown a lot in a very short time, and it is being given many different uses we probably can't even imagine. This is why we are trying to collect success stories around the world, and present them as "Use Cases". Any way you use Ubuntu in your school or workplace might be interesting and useful to someone else. The main Ubuntu website has a special place for these at: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/casestudies. We would like to encourage you to participate sending your story to mystory@ubuntu.com, using http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mystory as a starting point.

Easier Migration from Windows to Ubuntu

The Windows Migration Wizard is a new migration tool which imports all your Internet Explorer favorites, Firefox bookmarks, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts and Yahoo IM contacts. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual partition. In addition to single accounts, you can migrate several users' settings in Ubuntu. This has been added in Ubiquity, Ubuntu's installer, and it shows the commitment to making Linux as easy to use as possible. You can read the specification at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MigrationAssistance

Ubuntu Marketing Team - Spread the Word

The Marketing Team is responsible for promoting Ubuntu and every single way possible. Ubuntu Bug #1 is their inspiration and its final bugfix is their final goal. Spreading all Free Software is within the interest of the Team, and Ubuntu among that is its main focus. All Ubuntu users are/can be a part of its marketing effort. The Marketing Team is behind projects like "The Fridge", "Ubuntu Weekly News", "Case Studies", "Ubuntu Counter", "Ubuntu Video" and many more. You can join them in IRC in #ubuntu-marketing, in our mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com, or read more about what they do at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/

Credits

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Feedback

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam). If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page. If you have any technical support questions, please send then ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.